Hospitals And Ambulances

Sorry to take down this morning’s “Opposing Windows” post.  In seemed a legit idea at the time, but there was really no equivalence  between the two images  — one being the Dar al-Hikma hospital in Baalbek that the Israeli’s raided last week, the other being the ambulance that was damaged in an Israeli airstrike two weeks ago.

(As we’ve discussed before, this attempt to juxtapose partisan images makes me appreciate just how difficult it is to present a balanced portrait of the visual rhetoric in the current Middle East conflict.)

If there is anything to salvage from the original post, it’s the two images I offered as a postscript.

The photo of the Israeli soldier taking video inside the hospital, and this still frame (from a video taken by Kevin Sites) of the Lebanese Red Cross worker taking the now well-known photo of the vehicle’s roof, illustrates just how “automatic” and integral visual documentation is to this war.

Note: The original comment thread is intact below.



(image 1: Israeli Defense Force/AP Photo.  Baalbek, Eastern Lebanon. Aug. 2, 2006.  Image 2: Kevin Sites/Hot Zone.  July 27, 2006.  Tyre, Lebanon. Via Yahoo.)